Drama Sells!

"How did we become like this?"

"What?"

"Well... more like Fascist state of Italy during WWII than a free egalitarian democratic country of swaggies, larakins freedom lovers and lovable misfits like we want everyone to think we are."

"Oh... That! It's all about Marketing!"

"What?"

"Well it goes something like this. People make money by selling stuff. All electronic media sources such as TV, Radio and even the Internet are able to operate without charge to the end user because they provide advertizing space for people who want to sell stuff to the listeners, watchers, browsers, 'The Audience' right?" 

"Yeh right...."

"Well in order to secure lucrative advertizing they have to attract an audience."

"OK...?"

"Human nature, is kind of predictable! We are drawn to controversy... Drama. The marketing guys have us all figured out. You could try to get on the Telly and talk about love and peace but people get bored with it. It doesn't sell. 
Drama sells... Drama is not confined to those convoluted programs labelled as 'Drama'. Drama is all the stuff that happens in peoples lives that the media make a living by telling us all about.
However we are at a new phase in media/news/current affairs, they 'produce' drama. And they refine the art of Drama until you get what we have now. Radio and Television programs full of manufactured 'conflict' because conflict is the essence of drama and drama sell; so conflict is a marketable commodity. People will listen to some over opinionated bastard spewing hate on the radio. Feeding ignorant fear, justifying resentment and preparing the audience to condone retaliation against perceived enemies. The best part about this style of media is that those who don't like them listen too, feeding fuel to the outrage! What happens then is the worst of all! The half baked issues concocted and manufactured for the purpose of creating drama for the sole initial and primary purpose of making lots of money for celebrity presenter and shareholders then become matters of 'public debate' and are considered the issues of significance to 'The Public'. The citizenry has been duped! Informed discussion and decision making highjacked and the pillars of our democracy exchanged for the facade of the set of a cheep TV fiction.
Everybody's listening, everybody's watching and most of us are buying it!

The more conflict produced the higher the drama content, the more listeners the greater sales value and on it goes. 

This is not The Media providing information to the citizens of an informed democracy! This is a Marketing machine producing anxiety, fear and paranoia.... Drama. Inventing enemies, manipulating the perceptions of it's loyal trembling Consumer Audience. (A Consumer Audience Minion Army)"

"Oh.... And that's why we don't watch television anymore?"

"Exactly!"

"Oh, yeh... Right"

 
It just rained on my yard for the first time in months... The rain on the earth smells just like Bali! It's beautiful.

Media

My wife says that media... as we know it through the Mainstream Newspapers, radio and commercial Television is nothing more than institutionalized gossip.

I disagree. It is more than institutionalized gossip; although it is definitely gossip. There seems to be a greater malice behind our media.

Having been more or less unplugged for the past couple of months I find myself overwhelmed by the angst, scandal and emotional leverage used by all regular forms of media. When I accidentally happen to glance at a Newspaper, or find myself in a waiting room with at least one of the now apparently obligatory plasma screens blasting crap at a captive audience I am overwhelmed.

People around me seem unaffected by the imposing aggressive style but they are not. They are actually absorbing and believing the crap that is presented to them as news via the network or tabloid!
Just as in Orwell's '1984' people today appear to have lost their capacity for critical thinking. So many people's opinions appear to be formed as if they are carbon copies of whatever their favorite news reader or celebraty currentaffairs host has told them.

I remember debating the possibility of climate change with a friend several years ago, at a time when many scientists considered the theory pretty close to an indisputable fact but some doubt still existed. There were still a bunch of skeptics around who refused to accept the theory, I'm sure they were heartily supported by the Public Relations departments of all kinds of polluting industries.

As time rolled by and theory became fact (or pretty darn close to it), those who possessed the powers of critical thinking moved on to discussing how Global Warming could be combated in order to protect the future of us all. Sadly my friend along with probably half the population were still not ready to accept the theory of Global Warming...
Why? because the media were still broadcasting pro and anti Global Warming theory as equally valid arguments! Even though it was clear to anyone capable of independent though that the media were playing games with the subject and giving far too much credit to scientifically unreasonable arguments against the theory. People just lapped it up and continued on in their blissful cocoon of media misinformation.
I personally know several people who only actually believed in the existence of Global Warming when their favorite TV presenter told them the rumors may actually be true! The really scary thing about this is that even though they had believed there was no such thing and no amount of information or logic could convince them otherwise, all it took for them to change their mind was for the news to start telling the story differently! Yes it is possible to change the attitude of a huge proportion of the population simply by feeding them the information through the media resource they are used to taking their directions from!

I'm dead sure of it! But if you really want to make sure you've converted them to whatever story you're pushing you might want to use the other trick card in the deck. Tell them that all the other viewers/readers/listeners now believe the story you are feeding them and they are bound to jump right on board!

Yes!

The media is more than just Institutionalized Gossip!

Do you think the revolution will be televised? See link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_(documentary)


Australians will laugh at dicks in 'Blackface' and say it's only fun. It must be funy humourous a gag, a giggle, because Daryl said it's so. We are innocent surely!
And our media ask, through public forum and internet comment pages, the divisive question; Biased by consumer viewer loyalty, to the darlings of high rating TV Ausie icon status buffoonery and irreverence.... "Was it so bad?"
And the Jury will be formed thus! Through forum posts by maliable fools the pupets of popular oppinion and zomby slaves to media endorsed bigotry and anglophilic oppression. The riddle solved and fools absolved of any crime committed!
No panel of ethics will be needed. The audience will decide when they recieve their brief right after these important messages from our sponsor.

I wonder what Gil Scott-Heron would say? But I think he already said it!

(Youtube video removed) Sorry bout that....

No more Bulletin No more Newsweek

No more Bulletin, No more Newsweek,
Now we got wiki/blogs and no acountability.
No more reading what the Editor briefs,
Now we RSS our favorite feeds.
And so on and so forth.... (apologies Oodgeroo Noonuccal)

Apparently nobody wants to read current affairs magazines any more.
According to News.Com:

"AUSTRALIA'S oldest and best-known weekly news magazine, The Bulletin, has been published for the last time."

Read more at News.com below:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23100943-2,00.html?from=public_js

Not that I was a big reader of The Bulletin with Newsweek but it does make me wonder about the quality of News we will be receiving in another 10 or 15 years.